Descenders

It’s rare for a roguelite to be a relaxing, refreshing experience, but Descenders manages through its short levels and reflex-based gameplay. Between its high top speed and breakbeat soundtrack, it manages to find a useful niche for those after a quick pick-up-and-play.

Descenders is a solid experience if you’re looking for a time waster that you’ll return to over and over. While constant screen tearing issues hamper its presentation quite a bit, the game has solid controls, as well as simple though endlessly entertaining mechanics. While the controls aren’t the tightest we’ve seen, they do everything adequately and contribute to the fun. Add in the wide range of biomes to race through, including some more wacky ones towards the end of the game, and it makes for one fun package. And that’s to say nothing of the fun little gimmicks, like the first-person mode and the trials-style courses. Descenders has everything you could possibly want in a downhill cycling roguelite.

Descenders is a game that once you get to grips with can be a lot of fun, unfortunately, it probably has one too many flaws for it to be considered great.

Descenders can be entertaining for a few hours and although some of its mechanics such as controls and physics are sub-par compared to other games in the genre, it still offers enough cool gameplay moments to be considered an okay indie game.